The conundrum of Hard Work

Last week was interesting. I had some interesting conversations with some of my friends over the question of "hard work" and these conversations made me think if there could be a commonly understood modern day definition of hard work. I feel there are two types of people which do the work they do. The first category include the type of work where we have talent and skills and we love doing the kind of work we do and it makes us feel excited that there was another day to showcase our talent. The second case is where we have talent and skills but we think about those as a burden and things that have to be done to get a fixed monthly remuneration. Essentially the second category is not motivated to work "an extra mile". I will come to the extra mile bit later in this article. In this piece, I am not mentioning people who are not interested in work either because of attitudinal or skill issues. It is about people who are competent and are trained professionally. There are various reasons for the second category people to be in that space as there is an absence of an intrinsic motivation and if they are stuck at toxic workplaces, their external motivation will also be thrown out of the window.

Now, on the question of hard work, I believe that hard work is something where whatever you set on your agenda for a day or the month or the year is achieved and that too with in a sense that even if you didn't finally get what you wanted, there is a sense of jubilation in the fact that you were at your best when you were pursuing a particular output or result. Let me give an example. You are a Product manager of a new FMCG brand and the product launch is happening next month. Based on the personality types, if you are a workaholic you will burn the midnight oil and work 16-18 hours a day. If you like to organize work in a smarter way, you may achieve the same result by working 8 hours a day. I am positively biased towards working specific working hours as there is a vital need for a proper work-life harmony. So, once the launch happens and the product is not received well even after the campaign to launch the product was exemplary, what will you think?. Did you hard work go in vain? Not really. This experience will make you go back to your drawing board and you will study the reasons for failure and perhaps create another strategy while working similar hours a day as you have been used to. The workaholic may get the same result and would stay what she was, a workaholic. Workaholics usually end up having a challenge of a bigger burnout than the smart workers.

Now coming to "going an extra mile". Companies appreciate people who go beyond the call of the duty but many believe that it means working more hours and this is paraphrased as "going an extra mile". Let me share an analogy here. Let us say you buy a car that runs 15-16 miles a liter of petrol/gasoline on an average and if ran efficiently (at an optimal speed), it may end up giving 17-19. So it ended up giving you an extra mile. If you can deliver an extra mile while being innovative and not working extra hours, that is a sign of hard work. You may call it smart or agile work but essentially it is hard work. I believe more in optimality than seeking perfectionism. You can go an extra mile without necessarily pushing your limits.

In Western Europe, US and Scandinavia, people work much lesser hours than in India, China, South Korea or Japan, yet they are extremely efficient and productive. Numerous studies have shown that countries like Japan have a very toxic work culture in terms of long working hours and the burnout is severe, which is directly linked to poor physical and mental health.

Hence, working hours should be specifically defined and work culture should be around, "How can we at our best while working 8 hours a day". Now that the physical office work is back in many companies, focus on employee wellbeing should be paramount. I worked in a British organization around a decade back. The work culture was beautiful and I don't remember working more than 38 hours a week. Weekends were simply weekends, without looking at your computer to check the emails. When I visited the head office in the picturesque town of Haywards Heath in west Sussex in the UK, it was Friday and my functional Manager announced that he was going for Golf after work and then everyone around also shared their weekend plans. They were talking about this while walking towards their cars after logging off from work. I hardly saw them spending more time around coffee machines during the day, except for few seconds of chatter when they bumped into someone they knew. Hence, the learning was that we focus to be our best selves in the time we are supposed to add value to our job, we should avoid or minimize distractions.

In Asian countries, some organizations mistake long working hours as a symbolism of hard work but I do not subscribe to that view. For me hard work is something that makes me enjoy my success during the weekdays and my time to play and be with myself on a weekend. Yes all of us continue to work because the brain never stops working. From cooking at home or writing a new book or taking a child to a cricket camp, people are engaged in work all the time. Hence it calls for a best practice of working smartly, within the territory of fixed working hours. There is a reasonable argument for some types of jobs needing extra hours to complete the tasks like those of Professors/Researchers, Medical professionals, Attorneys, Start-up Entrepreneurs (at the beginning stages) etc. as the nature of the work demands so.

I remember an incident that happened immediately after I completed my business studies almost 25+ years back. I called the landline number of a prominent Swiss MNC based in Delhi and asked for my friend who worked there. Before I could complete my sentence, I got a voice mail, "Thanks for calling us. We do not work after 5:30 pm" and it was one of the most efficient companies of that time.

I guess it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get" and I personally believe in this thought. Our physical and mental abilities have a specific capacity and when we work smartly, we do not need extra hours at all.